


Excoriated

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen, Summons & Summoning Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 18:24:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2860724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before becoming a summoner, one must first prepare the way.</p><p>A partner fic to Imperfect, sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Excoriated

_Hold fast to the teachings,_ she’d always been told, _for they tell how we may be saved._

Now that she was in training to become a summoner, she realised for the first time that, in her naivete, she’d always imagined herself on the other side of the equation. She would be a summoner, yes, for the good of the people; but in her secret heart, she’d also imagined herself like everyone else, the recipient of Yevon’s saving grace. She hadn’t prepared for being treated as a saviour.

Suddenly people were calling her Lady Yuna, and making the sign of Yevon around her, and all of it felt surreal, like something she hadn’t and could never possibly earn. It wasn’t something a person could take in, being an ordinary citizen one day and a messiah - even a messiah in training - the next. She was too small to contain all this praise. It was like trying to swallow the sea.

But the praise was the least of what she learned to contain.

To prepare for the aeons, she was cleansed. She was immersed in water hot enough that she blacked out, cold enough that it took hours for her teeth to stop chattering. She was given potions that made her insides twist and cramp and bleed, doubled her over on the temple floor until they had raked themselves clean, purging her of every scrap of iniquity, every impure thought. She was prayed over, chanted over, her ears filled with the Hymn of the Fayth, her eyes bound until she saw the Light.

And oh, the Light. It blinded, it burned, it excoriated the soul. She’d never thought that light could be cruel and darkness could be blessed, but how she longed for darkness now this light was within her, scouring her blood from the inside out. And yet, too, she knew that when the light faded, she would long for it just as much. It was flooding her, stretching her to new capacities that she could never have reached alone; and now that it had done so, she would feel hollow without it. It hurt, yes, it hurt terribly, but it warmed and completed and taught truths she’d never known, truths she knew she could never hold alone. When it was gone, she’d forget what she had been, dim down to a mere ember and not this blazing sun. She wept and cringed and bruised her palms with her nails, swearing to herself to never forget, even as she knew she could not keep the promise.

For one brief moment, she understood what it meant when they called her _Lady_ , when they spoke of her as if she were the sea and the sky and the thunder of heaven itself. Then it was gone, subsumed by waves of longing, breaking on oceans of loss.

She wished with all her heart to be the Lady again, but she was the child, alone.


End file.
